Chancellor's Parashah Commentary

The unusual Hebrew phrase "lekh lekha" occurs only twice in
the entire Tanakh: at the beginning of last week's parasha when God
instructs Abraham to leave Haran, and this week, when God asks him to offer
up his son, Isaac, as a sacrifice (Genesis 12:1; 22:2). The first is
rendered by the JPS translation as "go forth" and the second
simply as "go." Both are inadequate because they lose the
force of the preposition "lekha." Martin Buber preserves
it in his German translation with the phrase "geh du-go you."
The inelegance captures the state in which God addresses Abraham each time.
The imperative betrays a note of anxiety. What certainty is there that
Abraham will heed God's unreasonable requests? The function of
the preposition is to convey the plea that informed the command.

In the repetition of the phrase, the Rabbis, who detected in the
life of Abraham a series of ten divine tests, saw a certain symmetry.
The first and the last, perhaps the two most demanding, were administered
with the same mixture of authority and solicitousness. They also
pondered which command Abraham might have regarded more favorably
and concluded the second, because its final destination, the land of
Moriah, was clearly stipulated at the outset. Unlike the first instance,
Abraham knew exactly where he was supposed to go. In addition, he may
have relished the prospect of sanctifying the location where one day the
Temple would stand (M. Kasher, Torah Shlemah, B'reishit , pp. 544, 870).

But, indeed, where was the land of Moriah? On what mountaintop did the
Akedah (the binding) take place? This is the question that interests
me for the moment. Despite the elusiveness of the biblical text, the Rabbis
had no doubt that Abraham's final, supreme test took place in Jerusalem on
what would become the Temple Mount. How the identification came about sheds
a bit of light about the process by which a religious tradition is formed.

Onkelos, the early Aramaic translator of the Torah, already reflects the
rabbinic view when he translates "the land of Moriah" as "the
land of the Temple service (Gen. 22:2)." At the story's end when Abraham
bestows on the site the name " 'Adonai Yireh' whence the present
saying, 'On the mount of the Lord there is vision (Gen. 22:14),' "
Onkelos reinforces the identification by paraphrasing the verse as follows:
"Abraham worshiped and prayed there in that place saying to God, here
future generations will worship because on this day and on this mountain
Abraham once worshiped God." In other words, Abraham's act of piety
sanctifies the site as appropriate for the pious acts of later generations.

The midrash parses the name "Moriah" in reference to the Temple
as meaning a place from which emanates either the word of God (from
yaroh, to teach) or the fear of God (from yare, to fear).
The former alludes to the Sanhedrin, which convened on the premises of the
Temple, and the latter to the exclamation by Jacob at Bethel just prior to
his flight back to Haran to escape the wrath of Esau: "How awesome
(nora, from yare) is this place! This is none other than the
abode of God and that is the gateway to heaven (Gen. 28:17)."
(B'reishit Rabah, 55:7).

Hence Jacob's dream of the ladder stretching from earth to heaven is
also associated by the midrash with the future site of the Temple.
Revelatory experiences of the patriarchs get aggregated by the Rabbis to
the spot which would become the exclusive gateway to heaven. According to
one midrash, God showed Jacob that night the fateful history of the Temple
first in its pristine glory, then in ruins and finally in its everlasting
messianic splendor. It is that sober vision which prompted Jacob to erupt
full of fright: "How awesome is this place!" (B'reishit Rabah,
69:17).

The only thing wrong with this rabbinic construction is that it does
grave violence to the facts. The patriarchs experience God in many places,
some specified, others not. A site becomes sacred solely by virtue of such
an experience. Thus God initially addresses Abraham in Canaan at Shechem
at the terebinths of Moreh whereupon he builds an altar, as he does at
Bethel, 21 miles south of Shechem (Gen 12:6-8) and later in Hebron by the
terebinths of Mamre (Gen. 13:18). The site at which God reassures
Abraham with promises of progeny and territory is not even given (Gen. 15).
And, the biblical text is silent about where God informs Rebecca about her
twins (Gen. 25:22-23) or where the covenant with Isaac is reaffirmed
(Gen. 26:1-5).

There is but a single passing reference to Jerusalem in Genesis and it
underscores the degree to which the place is off limits. After Abraham
defeats the four kings from the east and recovers his nephew, Lot, he is
greeted by King Melchizedek of Salem (i.e. Jerusalem) who blesses him for
his dramatic victory. Though religiously kindred spirits, Abraham refuses
to keep any of the spoils for himself. Let no one say that Melchizedek
"made Abram rich (Gen 14:23)."

Nor does Jerusalem fall to the Israelites in the conquest of Canaan
by Joshua. The book of Joshua specifically reports that the tribe of
Judah was unable to dispossess the Jebusites from the city and had to
settle for co-existence (15:63). (The contrary claim of Judges 1:8 is
nullified by Judges 1:21.) Not till the time of King David is the
impregnable redoubt finally stormed and turned into the new political
capital and religious center of a fragile monarchy (II Samuel 5:6-7).
The city can serve to unify the contentious tribes of Israel precisely
because it belongs to none of them. With the construction of the Temple,
Solomon seeks to strengthen the cohesive power of Jerusalem, but the
monarchy immediately breaks apart upon his demise.

In fact, the ascendancy of Jerusalem and its Temple does not begin
until after the destruction of the Northern Kingdom in 722 B.C.E. by the
Assyrians. Twenty years later, the city is unexpectedly spared the wrath
of Sennacherib's invading army, a turn of events predicted by the Prophet
Isaiah which adds to its religious luster. More enduring still is the
appearance of the book of Deuteronomy in 622 B.C.E. with its radical
cultic reform of a single legitimate sanctuary: "Do not worship
the Lord your God in like manner (at the multiple high places and altars
scattered throughout the land), but look only to the site that the Lord
your God will choose amidst all your tribes as His habitation, to establish
His name there (Deut. 12:4-5)." Though Deuteronomy never mentions
Jerusalem or its Temple as that sacred site, Josiah (640-609 B.C.E.), the last
great king of Judah before its destruction in 587 B.C.E., enacted the reform
and made the identification.

The final step of identifying Jerusalem with Moriah was taken by the
author of the book of Chronicles around 400 B.C.E., a little more than a
century after the modest erection of the Second Temple by those returning
from the Babylonian exile: "Then Solomon began to build the House of
the Lord in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah (II Chronicles 3:1)." And it
is this verse which Rashi cites in his commentary to Genesis 22:2 to prove
that Moriah is Jerusalem. Subsequent events would only heighten the
holiness of the city in the Jewish psyche.

In sum, I would observe that it is the notion of time that separates
us from the Rabbis. The appreciation of historical development is a
distinctly modern sensibility. A religious tradition tends to read
backward, retrojecting later phenomena into earlier ones. The beginning
is but an anticipation of the end. Our historical temperament reads
forward, softening the iron-clad link between where we are and what came
before. We respect the individuality of each event or text and study
them on their own terms. For the Rabbis, the present colors the past;
for us, it is the past which leads to the present.